The Cabinet has banned the use of residential premises for the provision of hotel services.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree amending the rules for using residential premises. The document, published on the portal of legal information, amends paragraph 4 of the Rules for the use of living quarters.
According to the text of the document, industrial enterprises cannot be located in apartments, carry out missionary activities, and also use residential premises for the provision of hotel services. At the same time, living quarters are allowed to be used for professional and individual entrepreneurial activities, if this does not violate the rights of other citizens.
Why daily rent of an apartment can be considered a provision of hotel services
According to 132-FZ "On the basics of tourist activity in the Russian Federation", hotel services are usually understood as a set of services for the provision of accommodation facilities to individuals and other services provided for by the Rules for the provision of hotel services in the Russian Federation.
If a person rents an apartment and, at the same time, does not have registration in it at the place of residence, then his status may well be defined as the use of a "accommodation facility", which means "hotel services".
At the same time, according to the law No. 5242−1 "On the right of citizens of the Russian Federation to freedom of movement, choice of place of stay and residence within the Russian Federation", a person can temporarily reside, including in a residential building that is not his place of residence. He can rent housing for any period, the minimum rental period is not prescribed by law. Therefore, renting out an apartment for a short time is quite legal. So far, no one has canceled Article 671 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and paragraph 2 of Article 30 of the Housing Code of the Russian Federation, which allow the renting of residential premises and their hiring by an individual.
What are the hallmarks of a hotel and hotel services?
The main feature of the hotel is a collective accommodation facility, which assumes the presence of several rooms. The hallmarks of hotel services are a unified management, frequent change of guests on a commercial basis, provision of linen, towels, slippers and a set of services (making beds, cleaning rooms and bathrooms, etc.).
Two-room apartments in Moscow are leased at the price of one-room apartments
“If we turn to the definition of hotel services, they, in fact, boil down to the placement of citizens in a hotel. However, it can be assumed that no statutory act currently prohibits the conclusion of an agreement for the lease of residential premises for an arbitrarily short period of time, since this agreement provides not for “accommodation”, but for “residence” of citizens, ”says lawyer Rodion Yuryev.
The owner can rent the apartment both long-term and daily. To rent an apartment for daily rent (short-term rent) according to the law and avoid problems, you need to draw up a lease agreement.
At the same time, according to the expert, if, by its functional purpose, organization of activities and other characteristics, the room is exactly a hotel, that is, it has all the characteristics that hotels correspond to, then the court, Rospotrebnadzor or the housing inspectorate have the right to recognize such a room as a hotel, and the services that are rendered in it are hotel services, even if they are formalized in the form of a lease agreement for residential premises.
"Previously, such problems did not arise due to the lack of prohibitions, now it should take some time until the judicial and administrative practice of differentiating hotel services and the contract for the lease of living quarters is developed, after which it will be possible to talk about some clearly defined criteria," says Yuriev.